Currently, when an individual is wearing headphones and listening to audio, such as music and/or media soundtracks, he or she may be unable to hear sounds external to the headphones, such as paging announcements in public places. As an example, if a person is waiting for a flight at an airport gate and she is listening to music through headphones, she may not hear an announcement made over the airport's public address system. Currently, she is required to remove her headphones and/or stop the playing of her music to listen to announcements. If she does not remove her headphones she may miss important announcements, such as gate and/or ticketing changes, flight delays, emergency information, etc.
As another example, currently if a person is working at his desk wearing headphones and listening to audio, such as a webcast, as part of his work, he may not hear an announcement made by his workplace's announcement system. Thus, listening to audio using headphones may prevent him from hearing other important workplace announcements made over the workplace announcement system.
The inability to hear external announcements while using headphones may also be a problem in environments where headphones are used to drown out background noise, such as industrial work environments. In such environments, workers wearing headphones to drown out external noise may also not hear important announcements.